Internal Controls

The Securities and Exchange Commission may postpone the implementation of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for certain companies. Nicolaisen Donald Nicolaisen, the Commission’s chief accountant, confirmed the regulator is considering a delay, possibly for smaller companies that are having difficulty meeting the deadline, which is currently for all filers above $75 million in market […]

Last week, nine accounting firms—including eight of the largest in the country—issued a joint framework for use in implementing Section 404 of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This paper, released Oct. 28, outlines a “suggested framework for evaluating manual and automated process/transaction-level exceptions and deficiencies” resulting from the evaluation of a company’s internal control over financial reporting. […]

This profile is the latest in a series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. An index of previous conversations is available here. Delineate your compliance and your risk duties for us. We take an enterprise risk management approach. I have the chief […]

When Flowserve Corp. announced last week it would delay the filing of its second and third quarter filings, it came as little surprise to those who follow the $2.4 billion maker of pumps, valves, and flow control equipment. After all, this is the third straight quarter it has postponed its quarterly filing. In the second […]

The U.K. Financial Reporting Council is offering some assistance to U.K. and Irish companies registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on how to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements regarding internal controls. The good news for those foreign-based companies is that the SEC has said it will accept the framework many of those companies are […]

How’s this for an understatement: “There has developed what seems to be an overemphasis on certain additional or duplicative levels of documentation, with a declining value in terms of how much that additional documentation would add to the effectiveness of internal control.” That’s according to Arnie Hanish, the chief accounting officer of Eli Lilly and […]

This profile is the latest in a series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. An index of previous conversations is available here. You are general counsel and corporate secretary, as well as chief compliance officer. How much of your time goes to […]

This profile is the latest in a series of weekly conversations with executives at U.S. public companies who are currently involved in establishing and developing compliance programs. An index of previous conversations is available here. We’ve never interviewed the compliance officer of a nonprofit before. What do you oversee? Well, Kaiser is a complicated institution. […]

SECTION 404 The September Data View The Actual Internal Control Disclosures From September View Sample Disclosures Of Remediation Efforts From September View Samples Of Internal Controls As Risk Factors According to a review of regulatory filings, 40 companies disclosed material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal controls during the month of September, and dozens of […]